“One of the great metaphors for creative community is the hive where many interact for the benefit of the collective. When the hive is successful it produces an abundance of honey. It is possibly the clearest symbiotic relationship that humans have with the insect kingdom. We don’t need to be reminded of the pollination of plant life that is attributed to bees. Bees make a great deal more honey than they can use. Who do they make it for? The rest of us. For the benefit of all sentient bee-ings. Bees appear in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and have been revered as sacred throughout the world.” – Alex & Allyson Grey

Rob and Chelsea went last night and rescued our new swarm from a pine tree over looking the water in Pacific Palisades. Rob captured them in a one foot square cardboard box and had duct taped the flaps so that the bees were locked in for the night.

Rob and I nailed and glued the 2 hive boxes and 20 frames and then we put on our beekeeper suits. The photo below is of us – just before Rob cut open the cardboard and got the bees settled into their new hive. It’s on the deck facing north so they can “enjoy” the afternoon sun and cool sea breezes.

The colorful gardens below have a huge variety of native plants and trees including sage, lavender, mint, goldenrod, daisies, bougainvillea, pine, yucca, olive and many more.

Leslie and I hope our transplanted bees like their new home… can’t imagine its TOO hard to adapt from their ocean view in Pacific Palisades to their brand new home overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach. Rob says we have a 50% chance they’ll stay. He said it usually takes about three weeks to know…. personally I think they already know that they have found “the good life”.

Our next meeting is on Sunday, June 26th at 11am at Atwater Crossing, just east of the Silver Lake & Los Feliz neighborhoods.

Check out the map in the right margin of this blog for the exact location. Please park in the two lots just east of the meeting area – it is free to do so. We’ll post more agenda details as the date nears.

“When a swarm of honeybees showed up at my work, my colleagues were eager to get in on the action. Everyone pitched in – from keeping track of the roving swarm and talking to the neighbors, to helping me get to the bees and bravely documenting the capture.

All the bees made their way into the box, and luckily just a day before I’d built a top-bar hive for a friend who Chelsea persuaded to let us keep bees in his backyard. Later that evening Chelsea and I showed up to his house with a buzzing box, and after some assurances (*and a tiny amount of peer pressure) we installed the bees successfully.

We checked up on them a little over a week later and they were already building lots of comb and looking happy. We’ll see in a couple of week if they choose to stick around in my DIY top bar hive. Check back to see how the CG bees take to their new home.”

“Chelsea and I drove out to Glendale a couple of weeks ago to respond to a couple calls on the Backwards Beekeepers rescue hotline and were able to capture two beautiful swarms. And just in time too. The exterminator showed up just as I was boxing up the second swarm from the hedge in front of a triplex. He wasn’t thrilled about missing the opportunity to bill his client, but was happy that the bees would be given a new home. Apparently this wasn’t the first time the Backwards Beekeepers beat him to a swarm.”

Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers

Bees teach us how to live our life in a way that by taking what we need from the world around us, we leave the world better than we found it.

Beekeeping is rising in popularity — from urban rooftops to backyard hives, the world is abuzz with interest in homemade honey. And who better to comment on the nature of bees than the former president of the Vermont Beekeepers Association, Ross Conrad.

MG: Describe briefly beekeeping as a business. How much energy do you focus on honey production?

RC: Honey production is not the focus of my beekeeping business at all. The focus is on caring for the honey bees and keeping the colonies as healthy and vibrant as possible. This means primarily reducing stress on the bees. In fact the only consistent observation that has been made of hives suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is that the bees in infected colonies are always suffering from stress that has caused the bee’s immune systems to collapse. While there are numerous stresses that the bees must deal with that we cannot directly control (see below), there are numerous other stresses on the hive that we do have control over. Such stressors include reducing chemical contaminants in the hive, eliminating the presence of antibiotics in the hive, making sure that the bees are fed a healthy diet of honey and pollen from a wide variety of plants and that the hives have access to clean uncontaminated water. When the bees health needs are taken care of, a honey harvest tends to be the natural result.

MG: Let’s say I’m an aspiring small-scale farmer, or beginning life on a homestead, or merely thinking of expanding my urban garden. Why should I keep bees, in terms of honey production, and their pollination benefits, etc?

RC: The biggest benefit honey bees provide is pollination. Pollination fees are what is keeping the beekeeping industry alive today. Honey is really a byproduct of pollination. Why should anybody keep bees? As suggested above, the life support systems of our planet are collapsing. The forests are disappearing, desert regions are growing, the climate is shifting so that some areas are getting dryer, other areas are getting wetter, some areas are getting colder, other areas are getting warmer, and our oceans are collapsing with large dead zones, acidification, giant “islands” of floating plastic debris, collapsing fisheries, and ocean animals that are dying in greater numbers every day from cancer. My observation is that it is our industrial civilization that is, if not the actual cause of all this destruction, it is certainly contributing to the devastation. As a member of this society then, I am partly responsible and part of the problem. This is a wonderful thing, for if I am part of the problem, then I have the responsibility and am empowered to be part of the solution.

One of the greatest lessons we learn from the honey bee is in observing how they go about making their “living” here on earth. As they go about their business collecting pollen, nectar, propolis and water (everything they need to survive) they do not harm or kill anything in the process. Unless they feel threatened and are forced to defend themselves, not so much as a leaf on a plant is harmed. In the process of taking what they need to survive they in turn give back more than they take and make the world a better place through the pollination the plants. This gift of pollination ensures that the plants can thrive and reproduce in vast numbers which produces a large variety of seeds, nuts, berries, fruits and vegetable in all shapes and sizes, which in turn ensures an abundance of food for all the rest of the insects, animals and people on the planet. This is the ultimate lesson that the bees teach us and challenge us to accomplish: How to live our life in a way that by taking what we need from the world around us we leave the world better than we found it.

Each one of us who takes care of the honey bees and makes sure that there is adequate habitat and flowering plants for the native pollinators in our regions, is indirectly through the good work of these pollinators, making the world a better place for all of creation. This is the kind of healing our beautiful blue-green planet needs desperately at this time in history.

“Practical beekeeping in this country is in a very depressed condition, being entirely neglected by the mass of those most favorably suited for its pursuit.

This observation is how Langstroth begins The Hive and the Honeybee.

There’s no arguing that the country of America was in a different place when the Reverend first bemoaned the lack of beekeeping, but there’s also no arguing that despite the evolution and industrialization of America, the lack of beekeeping has remained a constant factor. In fact, beekeeping has likely become much less popular than it was then, when many more average folks raised their own food. Clearly, Langstroth was both astute and aware of the issues of his time and endowed with a certain impressive amount of foresight, which is probably why he became known as the “father of American apiculture”.

What Langstroth probably meant was that people with small gardens or land in rural areas were quite capable of installing a colony of bees behind their house and reaping the rewards, but that beekeeping was a bit too complicated at the time for the common man to accomplish this easily. Reasonable. So he built a new kind of hive to enable an Average Joe to keep bees.

You have to wonder if it worked though. These days, anyone can order a pre-built hive box with easily removable wax-coated frames (thanks to the Rev. Langstroth), a kit with a hive tool, smoker and veil or suit, and a package of bees. But still, beekeeping remains “neglected” by those who are most capable of doing it. Got a garden? A roof? That’s all you need. Of course it would be naïve to say that everyone has got the time and money to start up a hive, but we can say that those of us with backyard space are “ favorably suited” to pick up the hobby.

Then what keeps us from beekeeping? Many of us (myself included) suffer from api- or melissophobia, a fear of bees, but I’ve definitely become less afraid as I’ve spent more time with the lovely creatures. Certainly there’s effort involved, and time needs to be devoted to a hive, but Anna and I have worked our schedule around not interrupting the bees too often- they thrive alone, and don’t really need our interference that much. And money? Yeah, it costs, but I would guess 99% of beekeepers would say that the work and the monetary or personal rewards they reap make up for it.

So not to preach or anything, but if you think you’re one of the “mass of those favorably suited” to keep bees-GO FOR IT!!

Bees need water too!via mistressbeek.com“For urban beeks, providing a clean water source for your bees is the best way to ensure they don’t take a fatal dip in your neighbor’s pool or flash mob the dog bowl. We’ve found a pet waterer filled with rocks at the base is the easiest way to water bees. Looks a little weird, but who said beekeeping was glamorous?”

recent blog posts

Why “Urban” Beekeeping?

We at HoneyLove believe that the city is the last refuge of the honeybee. Our home gardens are generally free of pesticides, and in cities like Los Angeles, there is year-round availability of pollen and nectar for the honeybees!

how can you help?

Become a member of HoneyLove and learn to be an urban beekeeper!

Plant an organic garden without the pesticides that harm honeybees!

Provide a water source on your property – bees love clean water to drink!